Smilee Grapefruit

I wanted to share a real find with you - Son and I were at our local Lebanese grocers (at the Mawson shops, for locals) the other day, and he spotted these packs of Deemah Smilee drink mix. It comes in pineapple and mango flavours. So - in the spirit of always liking to try new foods and drinks from other lands - we got a pack of each.

The powder mixes up in water a bit like Tang, but is much less sweet, and the flavour is really good. The pineapple one tastes closer to freshly juiced pineapple than tinned pineapple juice, and the mango one is refreshing as well.

A $3 bag makes 6 litres of drink. It's also great sprinkled on plain yoghurt or ice cream! I can see this will become a regular addition to our pantry!

And it's Halloween next Sunday! A holiday I have very fond memories of as a child growing up in America ... who can forget the goose costume my dad made for me one year, with a fully feathered and beaked mask (kitchen paper feathers) and webbed feet! I don't quite know why I wanted to be a goose when I was 6, but I think it was something to do with Charlotte's Web? And as a teenager, living on Mt Stromlo (which had a very international community) my brother Dave and I would dress up in scary garb and put on our "spooky sound effects" record to play to the younger kids who did trick or treating around the mountain (that's us in 1980!) :

This is me and the kids (Dotter as Baby Tiger, and Son as a Friendly Ghost) with some young French friends in Boulder CO, when we lived there in the mid-1990s. The kids loved Halloween then, and I admit I loved the chance to dress up as well!

I've been interested to see that this year there's been a huge increase in Halloween paraphernalia in the shops. Plastic pumpkin buckets, packs of individually packaged lollies, witches hats, masks, window decorations, the lot! Shops even have "Halloween displays" in prominent positions, a real rarity (yeah, next to the Christmas decorations which are out already, bleah).

I don't have an issue with this - apart from it being the wrong bloody season for the festival (we have Easter in autumn, and Halloween in spring, gah). Halloween, while at its most commercial and popular in the States, originated in Scotland, as All Saint's Day over 1300 years ago, in the 700s, and spread through Britain first, before eventually being exported to the New World by Irish immigrants in the 1800s. It is celebrated around the world in many different guises, but has never really taken off in Australia - maybe because of the season mismatch, or a mistaken reaction against an 'American' holiday?

The major supermarkets are even stocking large pumpkins for carving purposes (out of season!) - at $25/each, though, I wanted to go for something cheaper. I couldn't find non-cut-cup small pumpkins, then Dotter had the brain wave of carving up a few grapefruit ... which proved to be super fast, cheap, easy and effective! A few of these little guys will light the side of our driveway, so kids know we have treats in store :)